Can The NYPD Ever Stop Shooting Innocents?

In the currently renewed controversy over the Oregon community college shooting, one fact stands out: most people know relatively little about guns. To be sure, many people think they know a great deal. They’ve seen guns on TV and in the movies, and perhaps have done a bit of shooting themselves. Unfortunately, even those that might be thought expert all too often fail to truly grasp the subject, or allow politics to obscure or deny reality. This failing is producing many injuries and deaths in New York City. The New York Times reports:

A bystander accidentally shot by an undercover New York City police officer on Friday afternoon [08-28-15] during an illegal firearms sting gone awry has died, the Police Department said on Saturday.

The bystander, identified as Felix Kumi, 61, was shot twice in the torso as the officer fired at a man involved in the botched sting. That man, a 37-year old who was not immediately named, was hit three times and hospitalized in serious condition. Mr. Kumi died early Saturday at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, according to the police.

The New York Police Department said that the episode unfolded around 4 p.m. in Mt. Vernon, N.Y., during an investigation into a suspected illegal firearms dealer.

How could highly trained police officers in New York City possibly “accidently” shoot an innocent bystander?

Detective Michael DeBonis, a spokesman for the department, said the gun dealer was the subject of a ‘long-term firearms investigation.’

The police said that undercover officers in the past had purchased numerous firearms from him. He contacted an undercover police officer on Friday and asked to meet in the Bronx so that he could sell the officer a gun, Detective DeBonis said. When the officer arrived, the dealer asked him to drive them about a mile into Mount Vernon, a city in Westchester County that borders New York City.

The gun dealer, whom the police department identified as Jeffrey Aristy, 28, asked to be taken to the intersection of Beekman and Tecumseh Avenues. When they arrived, Detective DeBonis said, a third man, the 37 year old, climbed into the back seat of the car, held a gun to the officer’s head and demanded his money. After the robber took the officer’s money and started to run away, he pointed his gun at the officer, the police said. The undercover officer climbed out of his vehicle and opened fire, striking the robber three times in the torso, the detective said. He also accidentally shot Mr. Kumi, who was standing nearby, the police said.

A second team of undercover officers nearby shot at the robber as he fled, firing several rounds, Detective DeBonis said.

Mr. Aristy, the suspected gun dealer, escaped during the melee, but was later arrested, the Police Department said.

No doubt it was a classic “melee,” but one caused by the police.Tragically, this is only one of many similar incidents in NYC. I first began writing about the issue in August of 2012 withNYC: Bad Tactics And Socialism. I soon followed that article with part two, which further exposed the problem: poor training, and mandatory, 12-pound triggers on issued handguns. But the danger to New York citizens was far from over, as I reported in a third article. From that article:

The NYPD’s own report indicates that at least someone there knows that twelve-pound triggers are inherently dangerous to officers and the public, as the recent shooting so clearly illustrates. There is no ‘balance’ involved, as the idea that carrying a semiautomatic pistol with a round chambered is somehow inherently dangerous requiring some countervailing mechanism indicates a complete lack of understanding of proper pistol craft, professional instruction and gun-handling techniques, and contemporary firearm design and engineering. In addition, the idea that a handgun—such as the Glock—designed specifically to be safe without an external manual safety lever–somehow requires a trigger pull weight far in excess of that designed to function properly with that firearm is likewise unprofessional, uninformed and inept thinking.

The safety records of countless Glock-equipped police agencies and hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—of Glock-owning civilians, all using standard 5.5 pound Glock triggers, stands as eloquent testimony to the folly of the NYPD’s expensive, deadly dangerous and politically correct foolishness.

Ultimately, the political masters of the NYPD—which includes the upper-ranking police administrators—would surely prefer that police officers be unarmed, but failing that, have hampered them with poor and unrealistic training and triggers so heavy they imagine them to be a bizarre sort of safety device, making it hard for officers to pull them. Of course, when officers need to use their handguns, the 12-pound triggers make it very likely they’ll shoot innocents, as happened in the most recent incident.

(1) Most police officers are not gun guys and girls. They own few, if any firearms, and seldom, if ever, practice.

(2) Most police officers fire their handguns only once a year for mandatory qualifications. They clean their handguns less often.

(3) Most qualification courses have generous passing scores, involve only stationary targets at known ranges, and officers are allowed to shoot as many times as necessary to pass. Many have to shoot many times.

(4) Many law enforcement agencies use only cheaper practice ammunition for qualifications. It produces much less muzzle flash, recoil and report than duty ammunition. As a result, many officers have fired their duty guns with duty ammunition only once or twice.

(5) New York City political forces are generally virulently anti-gun, with all of the destructive baggage that crippling viewpoint carries.

(6) Mandating 12-pound double action only triggers, means that handguns have long, very heavy trigger pulls that make accuracy difficult at best, even for experts. Glocks available to the public have standard 5.5-pound triggers.

(7) Mandatory 12-pound triggers prove that the NYPD does not trust its officers with handguns, and is determined not to adequately train them. A very heavy trigger is a foolish measure intended to prevent accidental discharges, but has the unintended consequence of ensuring bad marksmanship, which inevitably produces accidental shootings of innocents.

These lessons apply to police agencies everywhere, most of which, thankfully, do not require weapons that virtually guarantee that police officers will shoot bystanders. Unfortunately, under the current mayoral administration of ultra-leftist Bill DiBlasio, it is all but impossible to imagine that proper training and equipment will be ordered for NYPD officers. Unfortunate, too, is that this reflexive anti-gun idiocy, and the irrational and stubborn faith of the left in maintaining it, is an integral factor in the deaths of innocents, in gun free zones, and on the streets of New York City.

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17 thoughts on “Can The NYPD Ever Stop Shooting Innocents?”

The shooting of bystanders is a logical outcome of the use of high powered firearms in crowded urban environments. It is probably the best argument against the arming of teachers, as schools are usually fairly crowded environments surrounded by hard surfaces.A bullet’s trajectory is not a moral equation; it can’t distinguish “good guys” from “bad guys.” Its path is dictated solely by geometry, physics, and muzzle velocity. In a confined space, bullets ricochet off anything and everything they come into contact with.
Arming teachers would be a first step towards circular firing squads.

Arming teachers would be the first step in ensuring that sociopaths choose alternate targets for their sociopathic acts of violence. Arming teachers would make an extremely rare event all but non-existent.

(N.B. By “arming teachers”, I merely mean allowing those teachers who choose to do so to avail themselves of the right to keep and bear arms – and should be combined with removal of “gun free zone” designation from schools, replaced with very public proclamations that students are under armed protection, and that schools welcome all law-abiding people who may do so lawfully to carry.)

Most surfaces on walls and ceilings in schools are not hard enough to ricochet bullets. Most hollow point bullets are fragile enough to fragment upon impacting a hard surface, making them far less lethal.

It is comments such as this that convince me that perhaps the US should have stayed neutral during the Second World War so that Hitler, Tojo and Stalin could have had their way with all of the foreigners that are so critical of America.

Chip Bennett is exactly right. If the evident good sense of the argument does not convince you, look at Utah’s record: nearly 16 years now, of allowing every holder of a state concealed carry permit, including teachers and staff, to carry concealed in any school, primary, secondary, or post-secondary. No one has been shot – either accidentally or intentionally – in a Utah school since then. Their one incident was when a teacher’s weapon fell out of its IWB holster in a toilet stall and discharged, destroying the toilet but harming no one. The teacher lost both her permit and her job, in a non-fatal exercise of Joe Stalin’s precept, “shoot one, encourage one hundred.” There hasn’t been another such incident.

Note that it hardly matters how many people are actually carrying in any given school – the unknown, but greater-than-zero, number will be sufficient to deter most potential wrongdoers.

There is no other single action that would be so effective in reducing the incidence (and the consequences) of mass shootings, as repealing “gun free zones” in every location except, perhaps, jails and courtrooms. Private property rights must still be respected, but it’s entirely reasonable to simply not visit or patronize properties that prohibit the carry of defensive arms.

I’ve ran several laps around a track and then tried to fire a gun with a 12 pound trigger. Even though I was in great shape at the time, my accuracy was terrible, and every shot became more and more difficult to fire. It was not a fun experience.

You’d settle for ONE arrest, when you have an opportunity to dismantle an entire cabal of gunrunners? Really? I suspect your two-dimensional smelling ability is feeble at best, which may explain why you’re lifting your leg on the wrong tree.

Bull. One buy gets them probable cause to tap everything he’s got. Within a week of the first UC buy they had everything they’ll possibly get. If they were going to get any more, they get that by flipping him, not buy buying more and more and more and more guns and waiting for him to invite them to cut him out as a middleman.

You’ve been watching way too many movies, and sadly it’s affecting your intellectual self-importance. One arrest and everything goes dark, then you succumb to defeat by self-inflected wounds…….and now you know for real ‘everlastingphelps’ that holding the sword isn’t the same as making the cut, is it!

This sounds far more like another NYPD gun smuggling operation gone bad than an actual sting. Case in point — where was the FBI or ATF in this? These sorts of investigations are in their wheelhouse, yet it was only NYPD working on this? They would normally rope them in just go get some fed task force to pay for the overtime.

I have a couple of observations here. One is that almost every
time I hear of a shooting by the NYPD, it would seem that the
safest place to be is between the officers and the target,. I once
knew a civilian firearms instructor for the Hawthorne Police
Department. This was back in the early 80’s He always said
that law enforcement officers were among some of the worst
shooters he ever taught.

He was really bothered by the fact that departments were going
from the old wheel guns to semi autos. In the old days, if an
officer misinterpreted a move for a wallet and opened fire,
the poor bastard stood a much better chance of surviving
one or two shots. Not so likely with 15 or more. There
was a case at a local mall in Torrance, where a guy with a
knife committed suicide by cop by lunging at two police
officers. Torrance had just moved up to the Colt .45 ACP.

They both unloaded at point blank range. One of them somehow
managed to miss him once because he was only hit 13 times. The
problem is not so much a lack of training, but a lack of calm. A
gunfight is such a traumatic event even Wyatt Earp would be so
uptight you would need a tractor to pull a BB out of his ass!

The way I see it EVERYBODY panics under those conditions.
So, it is my opinion that a school teacher or principal with
some degree of training would not necessarily be worse
that a LEO. It is not about caliber or terminal ballistics or
ammunition capacity. If you can hit what you aim at with
a single shot, you would be just as deadly with a .22LR
as a guy with .44 magnum.

If I were heading a law enforcement agency, I would not
hire anyone ahead of combat veterans. They are used to
being under heavy barrages of small arms fire. There was a
Japanese sword discipline that emphasized the drawing
of the Katana, the Parry, slice and return to the scabbard
in a single fluid movement.

I would equip them with .38 ACP’s and standard capacity
magazines and train them in hitting center of mass at no more
than 30-40 feet and hit center of mass in 1 or 2 shots.

My basic point is that cops are human beings just like the rest
of us. They will overreact in times of stress. Training helps,
but it is no cure-all. The poor crazy bastard in the mall
parking lot should have been dealt with by a single round
to the leg or shoulder, he was only a yard away from the
officers. But I cannot blame the officers for their actions
when just about anyone freaks out under the same
circumstances.